Fourteen years after the end of the armed conflict between the Peruvian State and the “Shining Path” Movement, this film documents different scenarios of the post-war situation. Victims, perpetrators, other actors, and the new generation begin to reflect upon the war and to confront their responsibilities and painful memories in a still hostile context. An ex-member of the Shining Path, the son of two members of that movement, and an ex-member of the Army who participated in the disappearance of several indigenous people, explore forgiveness and reconciliation in a context still dominated by fears and silences. Meanwhile, the members of ANFASEP (The National Association of Families of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared, Peru) mostly humble Quechua-speaking mothers, wives and children of those still missing, continue to peacefully pursue the building of a Sanctuary of Memory. This sanctuary is to be built in a place where torture and murder took place and where parts of the bodies of 500 victims have been exhumed. Finally, the film also shows the heartbreaking continuing search for the remains of those disappeared.

The film project was created by Professor Mendoza and financed by the Fetter Institute. Professor Mendoza is an advisor of the Social Science Council of this Institute.

The Hemispheric Institute on the Americas is an interdisciplinary group bringing together faculty and graduate students that focus on the study of transnational processes in the American Hemisphere.

Our Goal includes promoting research to challenge the boundaries of disciplinary specialization and culture area studies, exploring the connections throughout the social, cultural, and economic landscape of the Western Hemisphere from an array of perspective and redirecting and redefining the study of Latin America from a broadly hemispheric viewpoint.